Nigeria records seventh Ebola death

Nigeria

LAGOS (AA) – Nigeria on Wednesday recorded another death from the Ebola virus disease (EVD), the seventh since the outbreak of the deadly virus in the country and the second in oil-rich Port Harcourt city in the country’s southern region.

“The seventh and latest EVD death in Nigeria is the female patient on admission in the same hospital where the late Port Harcourt doctor was admitted,” Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said Wednesday evening as he gave a briefing on the status of the outbreak.

Five of the seven deaths were recorded in Lagos where the index case was recorded – Liberian national Patrick Sawyer who flew to Nigeria on July 20 from Monrovia, eventually dying four days later.

Then came the death of a doctor who the authorities say had secretly treated an EVD patient in Nigeria’s Port Harcourt, registering the first in the oil-rich city. The latest death is the second there.

The minister said the total number of confirmed EVD cases now stands at 18 – 14 in Lagos and four in Port Harcourt. Total number of cases under surveillance is 41 in Lagos and 255 in Port Harcourt.

Of the 14 cases in Lagos, five have died, eight were treated and discharged while one is still being treated at an isolation center, according to the minister.

Two of the four cases in Port Harcourt have died, while two are being treated.

Nigeria had since declared EVD a national emergency and adopted several measures to contain its spread.

In recent months, Ebola – a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure – has claimed 1,552 lives in West Africa, mostly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.

It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.